Anti-Fracking Greens and Their War on the Poor

Recently there was a blessed event at our house. No, it wasn’t that – my wife and I are long past child-bearing age. It was an arrival, though — the arrival of our monthly utility bill. We’re on the “budget plan,” meaning that our bills tend to stay level for a year or so at a time. What was “blessed” about getting a bill? It had gone down by roughly 15%, from $179 per month to a little over $149 per month.

The reason for the big expense “haircut” — good for over $355 a year to our bottom line — is that the cost of natural gas, which we use for heat and cooking, had gone way down over the prior year (from $3.71 in November of 2010 to $3.34 a year later). Not only did the reduction affect our biggest utility cost directly, it also apparently cut our electric bill, presumably because some of the electrons we buy are generated by gas-fired plants. The reason for the welcome decline can be summed up in one unfortunately freighted word: “fracking.”

Environmental activists may hate it, but there’s no question that hydraulic fracturing — the process of drilling horizontally into shale formations and then blasting the well with water (a new variant uses recyclable propane gel rather than water), sand, and additives aimed at keeping the gas flowing after the rock has been fractured — has brought gas prices down dramatically. In fact, a report from IHS Global Insight (quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column 12/7/11) quantifies the impact as follows: Without fracking, natural-gas prices would be roughly triple what they are now, and the annual savings per household will be about $926 between 2012 and 2015. That equals about $113 billion to the bottom lines of about 122 million households.

Luckily we aren’t poor, so we could have afforded our bill if it had stayed the same or even gone up $30 a month rather than going down. But we know a lot of people to whom the kind of savings we’re seeing would be very welcome news indeed. In fact, it could be the difference between making or missing a mortgage payment for some. For others, it could remove the necessity of choosing among heat, shelter, and food. In other words, at a time of high unemployment and underemployment it’s a very positive development for those struggling financially.

And a more direct economic “stimulus” could hardly be found. Lower energy costs not only potentially fuel consumer spending but reduce the overall cost of doing business. That in turn promotes risk-taking in the form of investment and startups.

Given that the windfall from fracking benefits the poor most of all and that the process, despite long and widespread use, has been shown to present very little environmental risk (despite recent EPA grumbling about a special case in Wyoming, Director Sheila Jackson testified before Congress in May that fracking presented no special dangers), why are the so-called “greens” so intent on trying to stifle it? If there are valid concerns about using large quantities of water in some areas, can’t affected states write reasonable regulations to specify what’s acceptable in terms of use and re-use? If there are fears about the proprietary chemical additives that a given driller might deploy in a given situation, shouldn’t it be possible to deal with most potential problems by laying out best practices and banning certain agents as warranted? Regulations might well add expense and delay, but then again the quantities of gas (and oil) being made available through fracking are so vast that a somewhat higher expense ratio certainly shouldn’t be a deal killer.

Is it really necessary to ban the entire process so our green friends can feel good about themselves once again? Do they even care that they’re acting out their obstructive obsessions on the backs of the poor?

Meanwhile, the gas-bill savings at our house aren’t quite so high as those estimated for the average American household by IHS. Then again, we are keeping the house a bit warmer these days.

Jeff Durstewitz is the co-author, with Ruth Williams, of the Bantam memoir "Younger Than That Now — A Shared Passage From the Sixties." He lives in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Click here to view the 67 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

67 Comments, 25 Threads

1.
jbtx

What is all this recent blather about “fracking”, do people really think this is something new? Folks should Google “Earl P. Halliburton” and discover that he founded his little company in 1919 out of Duncan, Oklahoma. He started hydraulic fracturing of oil wells to improve production soon thereafter. The original frackin’ pumps were steam driven single cylinder donkey engines. Folks, this is not new technology, we’ve been doing this for almost 100 years without affecting the environment or destroying the ground water,,, just making oil and gas affordable.

Not only that, but recently I believe Jim Cramer of Mad Money actually drank Halliburton’s newer frac gel. Obviously the industry is moving in a direction to head off complaints about the possibility of the process contaminating drinking water. This is normally an unfounded fear anyway as the aquifers we use for drinking water are normally far above the oil and gas bearing formations. Granted, the frac gel, be it oil or liquid petroleum gas (propane) can migrate, but the impermeable shales that separate the oil from water will generally prevent intermixing and contamination.

Not surprising since most of the “frac” water is entirely natural and biodegradable. One of the most common additives to frac water is just plain old corn starch, which we use everyday in our own kitchens to thicken gravy and soups, used to make “slick water”. There are other additives often used for additional friction reducers, but all of them come right from mother earth, ie., diesel fuel will slick up the pipes to reduce friction pressure while pumping high pressure frac water. The gel is merely the medium which is used to transport the sand which props open the fractures once they are established down hole. We call it “sand”, but it is really a man made ceramic material similar to what you will buy at the local home depot store when you purchase commercial sand paper, real sand would crush under the extreme pressures encountered at several thousand feet downhole, the ceramic is harder stuff.

I’ve been told by one of my professors here at OU (majoring in petroleum engineering) that one of the latest manufactured enviro-crises is the production of silica dust from the mining of components of frac sand. Understandably, the inhalation of silica dust can be bad for the lungs. However, they, meaning the greens, conveniently overlook the exact same circumstances produced by harvesting crops in Kansas. There’s obviously something more sinister at work behind all the anti-petroleum lobbying than just simply caring for the earth and fellow man.

You are just getting started while I am a veteran of 40+ years in the oil and gas business, I’m a former “Frac” guy with many hundreds of frac jobs behind me. I’m very conversant on the process and techniques. Believe me, if you are ever involved in an actual fracking operation you will experience first hand the extreme lengths the companies go to to ensure the safety of personnel and the environment. OSHA cracked down on us 30 years ago, nothing gets passed the safety inspectors these days.

Yeah I agree with you. I observed a four stage frac in California during this past summer so I know what you’re talking about concerning the safety of personnel and environment.

By the way, my intent is to provide general conversation for everyone reading this thread. I’m by no means attempting to inform or lecture a 40 year veteran of the business. Sorry if I caused any offense.

Absolutely none taken. Us old timers got you here, now we will depend on the next generation of oil and gas scientists to see us proceed into the future. I wish you best of luck in your studies and your new career.

“Also note that a properly constructed and cemented well should prevent migration.”

Yeah, that to…

We also do extensive 3D seismic surveys to find those fractures in sedimentary layers that affect the migration of carbon deposits. Recent developments in rock property analysis, mostly advances in software processing, have helped this effort immensely. We now know a lot more about what we are drilling into than we did 10 years ago.

Good post JBTX. Also heating for the poor, NOT. We have so much natural gas that we are selling it to foreign countries. We are supposedly in an energy crunch, but yet we are selling our natural resources to others.

Doesn’t that beat all? For profits, we screw the American public. While I can’t condemn the free enterprise system, it does make one wonder, where our priorities are.

More demand equals higher cost. Are companies supposed to give up profits so you can buy a new iPad or something? Where do you work? What do you do that you are so generous? By producing a good product at a price people are willing to pay and obeying our laws . . . they are being great Americans.

Stan we find the circumference of a circle by multiplying the diameter by pi, 3.1416 so any change in the diameter of a circle will show up in the area of that circle. In this case our diameter consists of two parts, expense and profit. We cannot separate these two parts of our economic diameter without doing violence to our prosperity.

If you are working for wages they come out of the selling price of your product under expense. If you are running the business then your compensation comes from the profit end of the diameter

When we have price control, which we do,we are chopping off the profit end of out diameter and adding to the expense. If we add subsidy we add more expence to our diameter and we finally reach a point where the market will not pay for the product and we have another gap on our shelves.

All activities produce pollution which goes to the expense side of the diameter but we are finding ways and means to control our level of pollution to an acceptable level. Now all we need to do is bring our political pollution under control and restore our prosperity diameter to where it pays adequate returns on our business efforts. I hire you, not because you need a job but because I need help. Remember Wisconsin when the Unions had to take a cut in pay.

So you prefer higher prices in order to prevent the producers from earning the profits that finance advances in technology not only in this but other fields as well. Not to mention that wider distribution of product means lower cost, and therefore price, per unit of production which does in fact benefit the poor.

It’s not just fracking and natural gas that the greens hate; they hate oil and cal as well and those too have a huge impact on the budgets of everyone, not just the poor. Remember Obama’s comments regarding coal? “Under my policies the price of electricity will necessarily skyrocket”. Or Secretary Chu’s statement that he would like to see US gas prices at “European levels”?

Yes, the Democrats just love the poor. What they actually know and love is that the poor don’t write campaign contribution checks but te elitist, eco-Marxists do and the poor will vote for them as long as the Democrts keep the handouts coming.

Well if the poor need help, they can ask ol’ Joe Kennedy and his buddy Hugo Chavez for free heating fuel! Pollution is fine as long as it happens in some third world country. I learned that from my green friends.

If you want to see the effects of fracking on energy prices go to:http://www.wtrg.com/daily/oilandgasspot.html
and see that natural gas prices have hit an all time low (this decade) of $2.491 per mcf, crude oil is still up there around $100.00 per bbl, but natural gas is at an all time low. Natural gas is the future for this country’s energy needs and we have more than enough to last for the next several hundred years. What we need is some brighter politicians. So far only Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin have shown real interest in getting America on a path to energy independence.

IMHO; every thing else is just smoke, mirrors, and politics as usual. Obama must go in 2012.

“Project Plowshare was the name given by the Atomic Energy Commission to a project that sought “to find practical industrial and scientific uses for nuclear explosives.” One idea for Project Plowshare would have used deeply buried nuclear explosions to form chimneys of broken rock into underground reservoirs for water in arid regions.

Nuclear stimulation, a process where natural gas trapped in tight formations is released, was going to be the answer to the nation’s energy crisis, at least in the view of project proponents.

The first stimulation project detonated by the Atomic Energy Commission was Project Gasbuggy near Farmington, New Mexico, in the northwestern corner of that state. By the time it was implemented, Project Gasbuggy was a single 29-kiloton nuclear device detonated December 10, 1967. The test brought with it little negative publicity. In fact, the project was “heralded by the New Mexico Governor, the State’s Senators, and members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.” Local newspaper coverage in New Mexico was generally positive. The day after the test shot, one newspaper included a photograph of a Native American with an employee of the El Paso Natural Gas Company. The caption read, “Space Age First Helps First American.”6 The company printed pamphlets describing the project in Spanish and English. Apparently, they were distributed widely.”

Read the rest as desired. I guess the subtitle of the anti-fracking campaign should be “How I learned to fear cross-linked gel and to love the bomb”.

It’s not just Greenies that don’t like ‘Fracking. The American Water-Works Association is expressing concerns as well, and they’re not entirely unfounded. Water quality does drop in areas where ‘Fracking has been done. This has been and continues to be documented quite well with extensive before and after water quality observations.

That said, while we need clean water, we also need energy. We must strike a reasonable balance. However, if you’re from the Green side, there is not much room to negotiate, and therein lies the problem.

If we don’t keep the economy that gave us our standard of living going, we won’t have to worry about what we will bequeath to our children, because there won’t be much of anything left.

I don’t know the circumstances of water quality deterioration in your neighborhood but if I had to make an uninformed guess it would be that ground movement associated with fracking disturbed the subsurface and released undesirable things into groundwater. Such things are not uncommon.

Perhaps you should also mention that most potable water sources, (for drinking purposes), are usually found at less than 500 feet. A 300-400 foot water well is a pretty deep hole. Oil and gas well fracturing is done at much greater depths, usually over 5-8,000 feet. In South Texas natural gas wells are typically around 10,000 to 19,000 feet deep. Gas and oil deposits will migrate upwards through fragmented water saturated structure, and have done so for eons.

Visit North Dakota, up around Minot, and smell the drinking water. It has always had that rotten egg smell because the H2S has been leaking upward for about a billion years. Oil and gas production has very little to do with ground water pollution. Here, there, or anywhere. ‘Sway it is.

It occurs to me that some of our readers may not know what H2S means. It is that deadly sulfurous poison gas that was the reason they put the canary in the coal mine. If you can smell the rotten eggs, you are OK,,, that is; the concentration is low enough to support life, if the concentration is high enough that you can’t smell the eggs, you are already dead. In the oil business we call it “sour gas”. It is just one of the many hazards we deal with to bring you the gas for your SUV’s.

Of course fracking will have some negative effects. Almost every human activity will effect some portion of the natural world, or the urban and rural human environments. Nevertheless, I can think of few other activities that with minimal risks can have such a major, positive impact on the quality of life for so many people. We can mitigate many of the problems revolving around frackin. We can adapt to some of the others. We must never avoid good things because they’re not perfect.

It’s not just Greenies that don’t like ‘Fracking. The American Water-Works Association is expressing concerns as well, and they’re not entirely unfounded. Water quality does drop in areas where ‘Fracking has been done. This has been and continues to be documented quite well with extensive before and after water quality observations.

I am calling b.s. on this one:

The area fractured is far, far below the level of potable water. The max depth of potable water is somewhere around 600 ft. Frac depths are on the order of a few thousand to well over 10,000 feet down. Water found at these depth is basically brine (super saturated salt water). Even if you were able to fracture thousands of feet up to the potable water layer, how would this brine laden water get there? It’s far denser than fresh water, which is why it is not found at shallower depths. The stuff would sink below the potable water layer.

Now there is a way to contaminate potable water.. This can be accomplished by not properly lining the vertical well casing. Brine, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, drilling fluid can get into the water table by leaching out of the vertical well as fluids are pumped up or down into the well. This is true for all drilling, not just horizontal fractured well. There are already plenty of rules on the books on both the state and federal level to deal with this.

If anyone here would like to learn more about fracturing, check out this presentation from the State Geologist of NY. His presentation was embargoed by his superiors and was only released to the public under a Freedom of Information act filing:

Here in the southern tier of NY (binghamton, corning, bath, areas not too far north of Pa.) there is no fracking going on, even though it was tested beyond any reasonable doubt and approved by our Cuomo run gov’t. I actually live in the Rochester area, and found out recently that fracking has been banned in the local suburb of Brighton!! — a very socially conscious suburb that would really be an unlikely spot for fracting, and I was shocked to see that it had been banned. Its not too likely much fracting is going to take place within the confines our suburbs! — but then, Brighton is on the cutting edge of showing how green it can be. Meanwhile, all the folks who own their camps and vacation homes down in the hills sure don’t want it! — some of these very same folks were against the windmills, believe it or not! — but windmills do have a very obvious presence as you drive along rt. 86 near Naples, ny — most of them rarely moving, but an enormous eyesore to anyone who just wants to see nature’s beauty, unmarred by pretentious human efforts to capture energy with as much expense and effort as possible. And the poor farmers in that area, unable to farm, unable to pay their bills, and unable to take advantage of what their now prosperous working mates are enjoying just a few miles to the south, in northern, pa.! The workers from these fracting projects pour over the border, camping out in motels and eating at restaurants in NY, but unable to work there. So here’s a big congrats to all the lefty ecoids, who have managed to shut down another very inexpensive source of energy, hence meaning that all the poor mentioned above cannot afford their heating bills either!

My sympathies to you New Yorkers, your state has basically missed the boat. Your neighbors in PA are reaping huge benefits from the Marcellus shale gas play. Working class people have good paying jobs and there’s a new millionaire created every week amongst the landowners.

There are a number of reasons the enviro-nuts in NY are so wrong headed about oil and gas exploration and development, but I’m sure you already know that. The eastern seaboard is potentially the largest market for natural gas in the country. If we converted all those old homes in the northeast that are traditionally heated with fuel oil, (essentially nothing more than #1 diesel fuel), moving them onto natural gas would save billions annually and help to decrease our dependence on foreign oil imports. There is, IMHO, no upside to saying “NO” to natural gas development. It’s cheap, it’s clean, it’s plentiful, and it’s right here at home.

We New Yorkers miss the boat on a lot of economic opportunities, which of course is one of the main reasons we are thriving. Not as bad as Ca., perhaps, when it comes to rejecting any meaningful energy options — it is the state that had invested billions (6, I think) in the SHoreham nuclear project on Long Island, which never produced any electricity and was trashed by Mario Cuomo. His son is now giving around a billion, I think, to Buffalo, for ‘projects’ to make it a more properous city; one of the projects is taking out the state sponsored street car cutsie walkway area where cars could not go, and replacing it with what was there before: a street. The trolley thing wrecked busnesses.
Oddly, the locals around Rochester did defeat a proposed windmill farm along the shores of Lake Ontario — go figure. I doubt any of the Brighton crowd was in on that deal.

my buddy’s step-aunt makes $80/hr on the computer. She has been laid off for 7 months but last month her paycheck was $7382 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this site… LazyCash10.com

This and the opposition to the pipeline showcases one salient fact, the Green movement isn’t about the environment, it’s about social justice. America uses more than its fair share of resources and so anything that reduces that consumption is a worthy goal regardless of the junk science used to back it. From millions of deaths due to the DDT ban to the influx of bedbugs in America that we now can’t kill to the ban on poisoning coyotes that lost me my ranch they affect us all detrimentally.

I love to see such good arguments as above.
The main point for the use of the gas drilling fluids, in most formulations, is that the toxic components in them comprise lower thresholds than found in CDC and EPA drinking water standards. The levels of the two listed on a Nicolas Institute slide show are one-half of the drinking water specifications for drinking water quality.
Yet the impact of all the envrionmental regulations in Chatham County, NC have cost the poor income and their jobs, in some cases. Apparently, one knee jerk is worth fifty jobs here. The regulations and passion for regulating are a higher priority than the underlying reason for them – helping the population and compassion for the poor.

It is interesting that you mention “drilling fluids” in connection with the anti-fracking” discussion. Although I didn’t see an argument in any of the comments above. I thought folks who know anything about the fracturing process pretty much agreed that the regulatory effort banning the practice was unjustified.

Drilling fluids is a whole ‘nother subject which is totally misunderstood by the greenies. Did you know that drilling fluids are nothing more than a mixture of water and bentonite clay? The mixture can be adjusted to any specific gravity which will balance the weight of the drill pipe as it goes down hole, i.e., add less water, add more clay to get a thicker, more dense, mud as you add more steel pipe to the drill stem. Otherwise the pipe will tend to float back to the surface. Drillers need to maintain a constant downward pressure in order to cut through the rock as they go, to do this they adjust the specific gravity of the mud which serves the purpose of flushing the cuttings back to the surface. (disclaimer: I’m not a driller but I know plenty of them)

you can actually eat the stuff if you have a constipation problem. Another common additive to drilling fluid is wheat bran,,, also good for your digestion. The environ-nuts cannot seem to do their homework before they discover a new cause to protest.

Did everyone forget the buried USGS report of last year stating the Marcellus Shale “reserves” are stated by the gas/oil industry to be 80% more than they actually are? Let’s also not forget that we are SWAMPED WITH NATURAL GAS right now. There is no more starage capacity – artificially made – we are liquifying the stuff and storing it offshore with nowhere to go. The stuff in the ground ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. Fracking works to a degree, but the chances of human error (and lately we are seeing fracking errors everyday!!) are great. The Keystone Pipeline myth is just that – we already HAVE 5 pipelines coming in with the stuff – THIS pipeline was only for sale of the stuff, NOT USE IN THE USA!!! read people, read.

As for fracking crap? GASLAND the Movie ain’t no fiction kiddies! The earthquakes ain’t no fiction kiddies!!! the drinking water pollution and systemic killing off of ecosystems and quality living ain’t no lie!! the theft of subsurface land rights ain’t no lie!! the astounding use of local fresh water reserves and depeletion and ownership rights FOREVER AIN’T NO FICTION! you people are blind!!!

And why is it “EITHER WE FRACK OR DIE?” The Northeast USA is THE BEST region in the world for biomass fuel production – Austria heats 80% of their residences on WOODY “pellet fuels” made in the USA and shipped overseas. BIOMASS densification (hay, switchgrass, reed canary grass, timothy, alfalfa, etc.) burning (Brookhaven Labs involved in emision reductions – PM down to 1 mcg/hr) and cellulosic ethanol production FROM WEEDS!!!!!! IS REAL, HERE NOW, HAS BEEN DONE, IS BEING DONE, SUPPORTS FARMERS ON THEIR LANDS, KEEPS FARMLAND IN PRODUCTION and HAS BEEN SUPPORTED BY SEN. GILLIBRAND, REP. HINCHEY, REP. HALL, REP. LOWEY, THE USDA, THE NRCS, NYSERDA, CORNELL, etc….. PELLET STOVES!!! the fuel is carbon negative (See Science Mag, Dec, 2006).

“the gas is not going anywhere” is false. The Earth is constantly producing Hydrocarbons, along with a long list of ‘elemental atoms and molecules’ as a by-product of fission. This is the reason that there is Methane under every rock we frack, Methane crystal ice sheets across the entire ocean floor and both poles and Methane bubbling out under the Artic Sea. Read more on this in “Fossil Fuel is Nuclear Waste” and “Earth’s Missing Geothermal Flux”.

The totally false Hubbert Peak Oil Hypothesis is just another of the elitist driven, taxpayer funded Faux Science. We have been intentionally lied to about EVERYTHING. It is time for a New Magna Carta and universal freedom.

You need to relax. Hubbert peak oil is 100% true, but you need to compare apples to apples. Peak oil is about cheap oil and maximum annual production. It is not about “running out” of oil. It just means that we (world production) will pump less oil in the future because we have already found all the cheap, easy-to-access oil and other energy sources become price competitive (like gas) with more expensive oil. Fracking changes none of this. Fracked oil is expensive oil. Deep sea salt dome oil is expensive oil. Also, peak oil is true no matter what mechanism created the oil. The cheap oil has been found no matter how you think it was made. It is a waste of time to create a conspiracy theory to explain simple concepts.

Oh, BTW: biomass heating for a medium size house (2000 sq ft) for one month would be about $250-300.00 (one ton of pellets and electricity used to power the stove/burner/furnace). I use it and nailed ConEd of NY – brought nat gas use down from about 630 therms in a cold month to 80!!! THAT’S A SAVINGS OF 550 THERMS PLUS DELIVERY CHARGES!!! Whoa – stop the clock!

You want low cost, affordable, sustainable, locally grown fuels that create local jobs? SUPPORT BIOMASS FUELS AND GET THE GAS FRACKING OUT OF YOUR HEADS!!!

SUPPORT THE FARMERS!!!!! SUPPORT YOUR BREAD BASKETS!!!! SUPPORT CLEAN DRINKING WATER OWNED BY THE PEOPLE AND NOT GAS AND OIL CORPS!!!

2. Biomass fuels= foodstuffs. Acreage used for producing biomass crops (corn ethanol, etc.) is acreage that cannot be used for producing… actual food.

3. Environmentalists (like yourself, I suspect, to judge by your rhetoric) keep telling us we live in a world of finite resources. In that light, explain the logic of using foodstuffs as fuel rather than using them to feed people. Keep in mind that food shortages still happen, especially in poor countries in the Second and Third Worlds. (As P.J. O’Rourke observed, most full-blown famines are politically caused- see “All The Trouble in The World”- but that is a subject for another time.)

4. If you’re against cheap LNG, how do you feel about coal gasification? Nuclear power? Hydroelectric dams? In short, what actual, practical energy sources are you actually in favor of? If your answer is anything to do with Holy Wind and Holy Sun, sorry- you just flunked the test. (Hint; the operative word was “practical”.)

If every home was heated using your method, do you honestly think you’d be paying the same amount of money for your fuel, not to mention your food, which in part, depends on the amount of arable soil that’s avaiable to produce it? NO, IT WOULD BE WAY MORE EXPENSIVE! IT MIGHT BE SO EXPENSIVE THAT YOU COULDN’T AFFORD IT AND YOU’D FREEZE TO DEATH ONE DARK NIGHT! (sorry, I was shouting in ALLCAPS to show you how annoying that is).

Sorry about the caps – passion. Not foodstuffs, not food-land – read: hay, weeds, lawn, timothy, switchgrass, reed-canary grass, anything biomass is a product you can grind up and pelletize. Cardboard, waxy cardboard (food grade wax on vegetable boxes that cannot be landfilled – wax caps/methane trap). Your lawn has a BTU content (dried) of about 7800 BTUs per lb. Waxy cardboard/cardboard pellets have about 11,000 BTU’s per lb. Coal is about 17,000 BTU’s per lb. – you do the math.

I’ve done it, made a factory, set up a trucking route, got a NYSERDA grant (PON 1169-2007), tested the stuff, used the stuff, sold the stuff, still heat my house on it – next Biomass conference Saratoga Springs, NY March 22-23, 2012. Just was stoopid – ran it on my own start up money and ran out of cash – USDA now has a mobile pelletizer built at SUNY Cobbelskill going farm to farm, pelletizing hay and weeds, NOT FOOD STOCK AND NOT FOOD STOCK LAND/ARABLE LAND(caps for emphasis) – the local “boyz” wanted to cut out profit at the stationary factory – me, so the push is on for mobile at the farm to save farms and agricultural land for food production – not good if condos are built.

It’s not sexy, like “fracking”, but it is completely sustainable (being trite), uses marginal soil/fallow land for production (remember switchgrass grows for about 20 years before needing reseeding/8-10 foot roots/carbon lock up) and real cheap – the nat gas bill went from about $1100 per month (Dec and Jan) to about $300 – savings were about $2000 in gas for the year – pays for the stove/furnace.

Google this: pellet fuel, wood pellets, pellet stove/furnaces, biomass burners; Hudson Valley Grass Energy / Lower Hudson Resource Conservation & Development Council as well. link around, watch the videos, and if you have about $8M lying around, I’ll build you and run a plant kicking out 10 tons per hour – wholesale it at $100 per ton, retail it at between $175-$225 + delivery/distribution, now you have a job producing venture. I’ll get you site plan approval, muni approval and grants BEFORE you pay rent OR we shall build a plant. Adds to the mix of fuels for energy self sufficiency.

Peel this onion – data is out; my factory closed because I ran out of cash and my NYSERDA grant was going forward, not for back rent so being honest, I did not tap it (I signed a lease and paid rent before I got site plan approvals – not good – should have been conditional upon getting permits – killed my next career – well, now I know all phases!).

Pellets for sale!! Beats oil at $70 per barrel. What’s in your wallet?

The tech and low cost alt fuel is real however. no laughing matter. just surpressed and ignored. It’s a bit rustic – you have to empty the ash (or get an automatic ash blower to an outside garden area – have to mix it into the compost- about 1lb of ash every 250 lbs of pellets (1.5 days). for the savings? well worth the price of admission.

Sortalike we should use no water because the Ethiopians don’t have enough. In my opinion the entire energy debate is one the Republicans should be pushing vigorously. Bachmann said if she were elected president gasoline would fall to $2.00 per gallon. Not sure of that but the concept is correct. Had we not a dictator in the White House but a president who said and meant that this country would become energy independent as a matter of urgency, the Arabs would drop prices almost overnight. If Canada were not so politically correct/leftist, they would be making a lot more noise about Obama’s dangerous let’s-use-no-energy-at-all agenda.

this article is disappointing. way too much anecdotal praise, way too little serious discussion of the opposition, why it’s wrong (if and when it is), and why the greens take their position (the really interesting issue). allusions to them “feeling good about themselves” may be true, but it wd be nice to have some serious evidence.

Jeff, hello fellow new yorker. I know you need the heat up in saratoga. Most of the greens are happy to be “fighting for a cause”. They dont THINK about the consequences. WE have to keep on our guard against people who try to make this country worse for some unknown reason.

Poison? Enviro scare tactic by any chance, like the alar that was supposed to kill everyone who ever ate an apple? No doubt at some point you’ll find a link between fracking and killer bees. Meanwhile, poor people and employers are glad to have cheaper heat.

Poison? Ask Cathy Behr the Durango Co nurse who nearly died after she treated a gas field worker for exposure to fracking fluids. Ask John Fenton of Pavillion Wyoming why the EPA confirmed his foul diesel smelling tap water is caused by local fracking. And by the way John would like to move, but his property value is half what it should be because of the drilling. And Laura Amos, ask her about her well being contaminated and caused her adrenal tumor, oh, but wait, she can’t discus it because ENCANNA admitted being at fault and settled with the stipulation she can’t tell how she got her tumor. I think the fact that CEO of Halliburton, Mr. Dick Cheney, secretly signed the bill exempting gas companies from the clean air and water act about says it all. The gas companies pretending it is a trade secret and detrimental to business to disclose what is in those fracking chemicals is a ploy to avoid the many lawsuits now and to come when the truth is revealed how toxic the chemicals are and the damage they have done. Poisonous methanol is making the air toxic. Read Theo Colborn’s “71 nasty fracking fluid chemicals” and the ill effects they cause. Until the current fracking drilling method is made safe it should not be allowed anywhere. I don’t see anyone mentioning the real danger of earthquakes fracking can cause. Do we have to wait until some innocent group of coal miners are trapped, or worse due to a fracking realted earthquake. There are many viable forms of non-fossil fuel alternatives we should be gearing up for. It won’t happen overnight but must happen.

We all learned that our president has bad judgement. Look at all the bad judgemtn he made since he been in charged. We are all worse off today because of his action and his failed leadership. True american want a better leader one that will be on our side and fire anti american Czars and people that hate america. I have learned that Obama is on the wrong side of american issue. So it is easy to see that if obama is for something .We all need to watch out. It not good for you if you are a true american. Obama has too much of REV Wrigh in his head. He can seem to get rid of the hate for american. Just listen to some of his speaches.

My local paper, as well as people all over the net, keep wringing their hands about fracking causing bad tasting water, flamable gas coming from faucets, earthquakes, etc. Without a doubt, assuming all these stories are true, they represent a very small percentage of homes being affected. The wealth that the gas produces is so great, it would be better for the drillers, drawing from an insurance pool they all contribute to, to buy up those properties and move those families to unaffected areas, rather than bend to the eco-freaks.

I’m not a geologist, but I suspect that if fracking is causing earthquakes (all the ones reported were minor, causing no damage) it might actually be beneficial because its better to release pressure with several small quakes than to let it build up to one major quake.

It’s not a green issue, it’s a human and health issue, with the facts as polluted by greedy corporate bastards as the neighboring water supplies. At least if you ran with an argument that God-hating Ayn Rand was right, that property is more important than humanity, and profits at any price is the only purpose in life then I could appreciate your not being a hypocrite. At this point you lose on on levels.

Is this what got your knickers in a wad? “Is it really necessary to ban the entire process so our green friends can feel good about themselves once again? Do they even care that they’re acting out their obstructive obsessions on the backs of the poor?”

What with you ranting about “greedy corporate bastards” and “God-hating Ayn Rand” and “property is [not] more important than humanity” and “profits at any price” I can tell you’re having a righteous joy ride. Now, don’t you feel better about yourself?

And what about this “It’s not a green issue, it’s a human and health issue” business? I’m confused. I thought green issues = human and health issues. Or do green issues = flora and fawna trumping human rights, especially property rights?

I grew up living on Mancos shale. Any neighbor that didn’t pay the extra money to have their water wells cased could light their kitchen faucets on fire, quite dramatically if they were out of town for a couple days. I’ve also seen tailings ponds spontaneously combust and light up the night sky for miles around. To conflate the former natural phenomena with the corporate irresponsibility of the latter does nothing to lend credence to your case. When you go on to claim causal links between fracking and cancer and earthquakes then you give away the fact that you simply are ignorant of how the physical world works. Yes, I acknowledge that your emotions are authentic, but that doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to get a clue before you spout off your marxist ecotheology prattle. God bless you and please watch out for all those falling polar bears.

Don’t confuse leftists with facts; they have no experience dealing with them.

Most drinking water is usually only a few hundred feet underground. Most fracking is performed several thousand feet down – because that’s where the oil is. The last time I checked, gravity causes things to flow down. Unless the Dems repeal the law of gravity, I wouldn’t worry about fracking chemicals flowing upward to contaminate water supplies.

The “greenies” engage in similar nonsensical arguments with regard to solar power. They claim that if we simply continue to make solar panels more efficient, we can solve all our energy needs and a small panel on the roof of every house will do the trick! But the sun itself generates only a certain limited amount of energy on every square foot of the earth’s surface. (I don’t recall the numbers of watts, but that is not important.) That is, there is only X amount of energy per square foot of falling sunlight. It is scientifically impossible to get more than that limited amount of energy out of each square foot. A solar panel can conceivably be made close to 100 percent efficient, but it can never be made 200 percent efficient! (You cannot get more than one horsepower out of one horse.)

Footnote: A friend of mine who lives on the fault line of insolvency and who voted for Obama admitted to me last week that he was indeed glad to see the price of heat for his family go down — took pressure off his budget. For a progressive, that was real progress.